yard sales, feb. 6.

I had completely forgotten to even look on CraigsList for yard sales until late Friday evening, when I figured what the hey.  As luck would have it, there was a church sale.  In February!  Those people must be nuts.  The place was slammed with people, other yard salers who were hard up for a good sale to keep them going through the cold winter. 

I picked up a large bag full of fabric scraps.  My sister-in-law mentioned that she was doing some small sewing projects with her kids, and I offered to be on the lookout for craft materials.  That’s sort of a stupid offer, because I am always on the lookout for that stuff.  Usually, though, it’s for me.  Yard sales often have big bags of sewing or craft odds and ends that I am usually game to pick up.  I was eager to buy some for someone else, though, because then I still got the heady rush of a good find, plus the warm fuzzies for helping another person out, AND I didn’t have a house full of fabric and buttons making me feel guilty for buying them and never using them.

So, I have fabric scraps, lots of them.  Some of them shiny, some of them rustic, and one of them looks like blue muppet fur.  I took a picture, but it looked like a really untidy pile of random cloths.  I suppose it is exactly that, but it looked too much like my laundry for me to post it on the internet.  Plus, if I took a picture of it, then my sister-in-law might be able to tell that I am keeping some of them for myself.

I also bought this light, and it, too, is for someone else, but I don’t know who yet.  Josh has a friend  who likes to make movies, and I have a niece who is into theatre stuff and could use some lamps.  It’s kinda flimsy, not quite something you’d buy for your dorm room, but not exactly Hollywood quality either.  I’ve seen the same model online, and it’s advertised to DJs. 

My find of the day was a lampshade.  That sounds like a terrible yard sale day, doesn’t it?  Shopped for an hour, spent $10 total, and the thing that makes me happiest, even more than blue muppet fur, is a lampshade.  Well, it’s kinda special.

I bought a bird bath lamp two months ago at Goodwill.  I love it.  I think it is unique and somehow classy at the same time.  It looks weird, but in an expensive way, as opposed to my many weird and cheap weird possessions.  I paid $7 for it, which is a lot for me to spend on one thing (online price for a new one - $130).  Such was my love for the bird bath lamp.  It came with a white canvas shade, which was nice, but the whole thing was too much white for me.  I liked the textured material, but thought something in black would be much better.  I decided to look for a new shade.

I brought it home and was eager to show Josh.  He immediately laughed at it.  He thought it was goofy and said that I did not need another lamp.  I was a little bit crushed. 

The beloved bird bath lamp sat in my spare bedroom for months.  That room is sort of a holding area for my yard sale things until I figure out what to do with them.  It also contains several boxes of stuff that I’m taking to the thrift store, as soon as I stop being lazy.  The whole secondhand circle of life is in that room.  It’s sorta full of junk.  It looks like a booth at the flea market with a half-made bed.

And then this week at the church yard sale, I found a lovely drum shade, just the right size, covered in burlap.  It was $2, which is more than I like to pay for a stupid lamp shade.  That’s about what I like to pay for the whole lamp, shade and all.  But it looks great on my bird bath lamp.  I set it up in the living room, where I could look at it every day and see the little birdies.  Josh saw it and said that he liked it.  I don’t think he recalled ever seeing it before.  I don’t want to stereotype and say that all men are frustrating, but this man?  He is frustrating.

As we were driving home, it started snowing.  Which means I can now say that I’ve been yard saling in the snow.  It’s not technically true, but it’s true enough.